7/24/2013

A Review of Chief Mark Kessler's Short Film "I'm Sorry for hurting feelings":
The police chief of Gilberton, Pennsylvania, Mark Kessler, has created an entire oeuvre of cinematic work for YouTube, including "Kerry & UN, can SUCK IT," in which he calls the decorated Vietnam War vet a "piece of shit traitor," and "Basic defensive pistol," where, in uniform, he shoots a picture of a clown he says is a photo of Nancy Pelosi without her make-up. Truly, Kessler traffics in intellectual inversions.

But Kessler's career on film has peaked with his latest, "I'm Sorry for hurting feelings." In the course of 2 minutes and 45 seconds, we witness the limits of the rage of the impotent man, one who lashes out at the world while secretly but knowingly revealing that he himself is the "pussy" and "cocksucker" he calls everyone who disagrees with him. It is, in a word, a masterful display of irony.

The film opens with Kessler in a simple outfit: cap, glasses, a t-shirt emblazoned with the insignia of the CSF, the Constitution Security Force, an organization that Kessler himself started, a kind of militia of one devoted to "protecting" the Second Amendment. He speaks to us seemingly sincerely, offering his apology to anyone who had "hurt feelings" over the profanity used in previous videos. Then Kessler, head bowed, walks off screen for a few seconds, allowing us to contemplate his words as we stare at the desolate dirt road and brush-covered hillside, a tall shrub delicately waving in the breeze, its shadow shifting along with it. Indeed, the sunlight itself provides the image a washed-out look, as if Kessler is, like the scenery, a man now bereft of anything except the most subtly animated life.

However, soon, the Chief pulls the rug out from under us. He returns, carrying an automatic rifle, perhaps an AK-47, and tells us, with great relish, "Yeah, I don’t think so. This boy don’t roll that way," adding, with elongated vowels, "Fuck you."

He then tells the viewers to "go fuck yourself" before firing the gun until it is empty at the hillside off-screen. It is at this moment that Kessler tips his hand: he is nothing without a gun. All of his masculinity, all of his courage, all of his identity disappear when he does not have a loaded gun in his hands. He takes out another rifle, an M-16, and fires that until empty. Finally, he takes a pistol with a large magazine and fires that.

Look at that picture. The gun is a disembodied cock and balls, a compensation for his own lack of both. If there is a clearer image of the pathetic, emasculated American male, the Rude Pundit cannot think of it.

The lack of genitalia bespeaks an emptiness of the soul: the way the guns are easily replaced when out of ammunition; the fact that Kessler is firing at nothing, not a target, not a tree, just shooting to show he can shoot, or perhaps firing at phantoms because they are easier to hit; the several seconds of silence each time that Kessler exits the screen, ostensibly to get another phallus/gun, leaving us to ponder quiet in the absence of the cacophony of the weapons; the isolating feel of a man, alone, filming himself, on a dirt road to nowhere.

We should thank Chief Kessler for his honesty, for his filmic art, and for his willingness to make brutally clear that he is a dickless coward who hides behind bullets.